Open research questions in Rhetoric and Communication Studies
46 unresolved questions extracted from the limitations and future-work sections of 2,356 Rhetoric and Communication Studies papers in our library. Each links back to the study that raised it.
What the literature leaves open
Retrospective interviews with CT believers confirm a degree of conceptual “fossilization” (Danesi) but it still remains an open question whether this is the result of neurophysiological processes, as posited by Danesi, or of socio-emotive benefits, such as emotional reassurance in identity building.
Because of the ways in which it relies on separation and identification to generate enjoyment for its subjects, strategies like satire and empathy are insufficient to respond to sadistic conservative discourses, but rhetoric’s capacity to destabilize identities and undermine certainty remain promising contributions to engaged scholarship.
For differently suited intellectuals, writing a divisive book on the Covid-19 pandemic not even 100 days into it, when lack of data, research and certainty is still symptomatic and disinformation is rampant, would resemble something like gross recklessness.
Celeste Michelle Condit's Angry Public Rhetorics: Global Relations and Emotion in the Wake of 9/11 is a complex and challenging contribution to the understudied area of public emotion that charts the course for an arduous but rewarding journey toward a greater synthesis between the study of human biological and material existence and the study of our symbolic world.
This introduction to a special section of the May 2019 issue of International Affairs, on ‘The dynamics of dissent’, develops the concept of behavioural contestation and outlines triggers and effects of this hitherto under-researched expression of dissent.
The analysis reveals that threateners use myriad rhetorical strategies to convey interpersonal meaning (Martin and Rose, 2003) and take stances that both strengthen and weaken their apparent level of commitment, thus contradicting the one-sidedness of threatening language ideologies and demonstrating the need for further research on stancetaking in threatening discourse.
Although these three concepts are inherently useful, both for analyzing past rhetorical episodes and for projecting emancipatory rhetorical possibilities in the present, they are insufficiently grounded in a historical account of the differences between ancient and modern prudential deliberation, rhetorical forms, and rhetorical forums.
Modernity as a Rhetorical Problem: <i>Phronēsis</i>, Forms, and Forums in <i>Norms of Rhetorical Culture</i> · 2008 · DOIThis analysis is used for two purposes: firstly, to argue for an integration of self-categorization theory with rhetorical/discursive psychologies and hence for further research into the ways in which self-categories may be contested in argument rather than determined by cognitive computations; secondly, to argue for further research into how political rhetoric may affect mass action through the ways in which collectivities are defined.
Self-category constructions in political rhetoric; an analysis of Thatcher's and Kinnock's speeches concerning the British miners' strike (1984–5) · 1996 · DOIAlthough the results of this particular experiment are limited by the fact that the strategies constructed were only one sentence long, further research might utilize paragraph-long strategies, provided that language vari- ables were adequately controlled, and might explore such dependent variables as comprehension and attitude change.
[85] Downloaded by [Memorial University of Newfoundland] at 15:09 07 October 2014 WESTERN SPEECH SPRING 1973 The substance of my argument is that characterizations should be studied as the primary clues to electoral image competition. The model is an attempt to sell the view that images should be studied as perceptual phenomena and collective transactions, necessary to assign order to an ambiguous political environment, functioning as both output from and input to dialectical relationships, influenced by political competition and in turn influencing the forms of that competition.
Anal- ysis of the writings of revolutionaries may also serve a more critical but re- lated function, that of exposing the fal- lacies, the insufficient evidence, the inat- tention to dysfunctions of violence, and so on, that are so often found in revolu- tionary tracts on the subject.
Persuasion in social conflicts: A critique of prevailing conceptions and a framework for future research · 1972 · DOIAre we to conclude finally that there are no standards by which to evaluate criticism except one's political allegiance or personal whim? The standards of scholarship in criticism relate to the critic's use of evidence, specifically to those portions of an object equally avail- able to the critic and his auditor.
LINNEA RATCLIFF Very little writing in the field has been concerned with the values of the critic. This article examines the current value orientation which permeates writing about rhetorical criticism and then suggests an alternative. npHE INTRODUCTORY summary of a recent symposium on rhetori- •*- cal criticism bills the participants as expressing divergent views regarding the nature of rhetorical criticism.1 One might initially conclude that the members of that symposium do share little unanimity of position. Such is not entirely the case. Despite an apparent lack of consensus there is an agreement among them, shared by a majority of rhetorical scholars, so fundamental that it is seldom verbalized and often uncritically accepted: the underlying assumption of objectivism in rhetorical criticism. While one member of the symposium predicts more permissiveness and latitude in the selection of the critical object and sees pluralism in method, another calls for "more discrete judgments about the multiplicity of factors that comprise a single instance of communication."2 Despite these differences neither of these scholars, nor any others in the symposium, seem likely to suggest anything other than a need for objectivity in the critical function. Indeed, at least one scholar would go so far as to call critics researchers. The purpose of this article is two-fold.
21 This paper's purpose has not been that of denigration of Black's pro- vocative suggestion that new avenues of rhetorical criticism need to be explored.
.' of Miller, Norman, and Philip G. Zim- bardo. Motives for fear-induced affili- ation: emotional comparison or in- terpersonal similarity. JPer 34(1966). 481-503. Mohrmann, G. P. The language of na- Downloaded by [Monash University Library] at 13:27 06 March 2015 BIBLIOGRAPHY OF RHETORIC AND PUBLIC ADDRESS 205 ture and elocutionary theory. QJS 52 (ig66).i 16-24. cacion. Cultura Universitaria 91 (ig66).i28-43. Montague, William E.; Jack A. Adams; and Harold O. Keiss. Forgetting and natural language mediation. JExP 72(ig66).829-33. Moreno, J. L. Role playing and pscho- drama in politics: a brief note. Inter- national Journal of Sociometry and Sociatry 5(ig66).67-g. Observations of xole playing in national and international debates. Mues, Werner. Sprache=Kommunika- tionsmittel? Muttersprache 75(1965). Mulder, M.; R. Van Dijk; T. Stelwagen; J. Verhagen; S. Soutendijk; and J. Zwezerijnen.
Did he les- sen or strengthen his effectiveness by dropping the impersonation? Not us- ing the device at all was scarcely a pos- sibility, for the drawing power which Nasby the humorist held depended upon the characterization; but main- taining the device throughout was an available alternative.
Woozley in the preface to the most recent edition of Reid's work, Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man (London, 1941), says that Reid's philosophy has been unduly neglect- ed, partly because Reid was long-winded and not particularly adventurous, and partly because the Hamilton edition of his work, published in 1846, was presented in a form which was scarce- ly readable.
Gymnosophists, bards, and philosophers, when they have constructed their workshops of wisdom and have devoted themselves to the contemplation and study of things infinite, have never cultivated these studies; not because time or talent was lacking to men at once the most disengaged and the most sapient, but because they deemed this subject an absurd and childish mat- ter, unworthy of philosophical esteem.
This analysis identifies rhetorical education as an understudied yet significant factor that shapes an unelected political spouse’s transformation into a rhetorical first lady with a national platform of consequence.
“I would like to take a course in public speaking, not that I ever intend to make a speech”: Lady Bird Johnson, Collaborative Rhetorical Learning, and the Rhetorical First Lady Revisited · 2026 · DOIThis paper takes up this call for interdisciplinarity, utilising a speech-act theory of oppression to better understand the real-life experiences of the under-researched Czech and Slovak communities of Northern Ireland.
Abstract In several key passages in Thomas Hobbes's understudied translation of Thucydides's History of the Peloponnesian War , Hobbes's Pericles directs audiences to distrust rhetoric in favor of calculative self-interest, inward-focused affective states, and an epistemic reliance on sovereignty.
Chapters 3 through 5 develop the idea of a “troubled freedom,” a way of negotiating the rules (and there are rules!) to rhetoric without being overly limited by them.
” While the majority of studies suggest that the Chinese-language media have perpetuated the patriarchal discourse surrounding the leftover myth, few studies have investigated the English-language news media in China which claims to be more liberal with a critical approach.
Perpetuating and/or resisting the “leftover” myth? The use of (de)legitimation strategies in the Chinese English-language news media · 2020 · DOI” Despite their legal citizenship, homeless women are essentially liminal citizens—their citizenship is lacking substantial political power and is thus barren.
Many scholars in our discipline have complained that the work of the two Belgians is insufficiently studied, even though their status is as high as that of thinkers who receive far more attention, such as Kenneth Burke.
Most-cited papers in Rhetoric and Communication Studies
- Self-category constructions in political rhetoric; an analysis of Thatcher's and Kinnock's speeches concerning the British miners' strike (1984–5) · European Journal of Social Psychology · 1996 · 135 citations
- Us Over Here Versus Them Over There…Literally: Measuring Place Resentment in American Politics · Political Behavior · 2020 · 132 citations
- The dynamics of dissent: when actions are louder than words · International Affairs · 2019 · 84 citations
- Foxes, green fields and Britishness: On the rhetorical construction of place and national identity · British Journal of Social Psychology · 2004 · 79 citations
- Counter-Public Enclaves and Understanding the Function of Rhetoric in Social Movement Coalition-Building · Communication Quarterly · 2011 · 69 citations
- The Language of Pandemic Leaderships: Mapping Political Rhetoric During the COVID‐19 Outbreak · Political Psychology · 2021 · 65 citations
- Multimodality, politics and ideology · Journal of Language and Politics · 2016 · 60 citations
- Rhetorical History as Institutional Work · Journal of Management Studies · 2022 · 56 citations
- Emotion and Public Diplomacy: Dispositions in International Communications, Dialogue, and Persuasion · International Studies Review · 2014 · 46 citations
- Constructing Threat and Appropriating “Civil Rights”: Rhetorical Strategies of Gun Rights and English Only Leaders · Symbolic Interaction · 2008 · 43 citations
Most recent work
- Affective Narrative Inquiry (ANI) as Diagrammatic Practice: Following Conservative Media’s Affective Uptake of the United States Women’s National Soccer Team in Contemporary Culture Wars · Cultural Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies · 2026
- Introduction: Theorizing Rhetoric: Bridging Concepts Across Multiple Perspectives, Different Practices and Contexts · Topoi · 2026
- Co-Stewardship and the Defiance of "Anti-American" Rhetoric · American Quarterly · 2026
- Reflections on my work and on rhetoric as a methodology · Bulletin of Sociological Methodology/Bulletin de Méthodologie Sociologique · 2026
- From a whisper to a movement: investigating the shared rhetorical spaces of whistleblowing and social protest · Critical Studies in Media Communication · 2026
- Emotional Framing of Emotional Deviants as a Political Strategy for Strengthening Collective Emotional Resilience · Qualitative Sociology Review · 2026
- Imagining Community Through Counterspeech · Humans · 2026
- Project Fear: Emotions, Game Theory, and Failed Persuasion in Ancient Greek and Contemporary Politics · Anali Pravnog fakulteta u Beogradu · 2026
- EMOTIONAL WEAPONS AND MANUFACTURING THE ENEMY: A CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF BIDEN’S POST-TRUTH WAR RHETORIC · Akademik Yaklaşımlar Dergisi · 2026
- Ethos – between <i>vir bonus</i> and VIA: Virtue ethics in contemporary rhetorical education · Res Rhetorica · 2026
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